The Jordan Harbinger Show - 856: Ian Urbina | Maritime Misdeeds on the Outlaw Ocean

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Ian Urbina is a journalist, the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, and the author of The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier. What We Discuss with Ian Urbina: What makes the ocean the Earth's final untamed frontier? Who has jurisdiction to enforce laws in international waters? For that matter, what are the laws, and who makes them? How does slavery persist on the open ocean? Who is most vulnerable to finding themselves enslaved, and who is profiting from their misery? What percentage of the fishing that supplies Western cities with delicious seafood is illegal? What can we do to ensure we're not supporting high crimes on the high seas? And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/856 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you do. get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Arms trafficking, oil smuggling, human smuggling, even just elicit cigarettes, whatever industry you want to name, has a black market. And there's a good chance that the best way to move that black market good is by water. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker

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I ran out of time with Ian today. I know you're going to love this conversation, especially if you liked our previous episodes on shipping and greenwashing and environmental stuff and just all the, the high seas stuff is just always wild. There's no real law out there. There is, but there isn't. So it's really,

the stuff that goes on is quite unbelievable. And that's what we're going to go over here today. So let's go with Ian Urbina. You've actually done a ton of work. covering the dark side of the ocean. And man, I knew there was some crazy stuff, crime and all that going out on the high seas. But your book really opened my eyes to some of, frankly, some of the worst of humanity, just running roughshod on human rights out there. I mean, it's truly lawless on the open seas, man.

Yeah, I mean, it was shocking to me. I had worked at sea a little bit and heard stories, but not until I got out there. Did I see, like, and what's funny is lawless for good and for bad. I mean, I decided to call it the outlaw ocean for a reason, which is to say it's sort of more extra legal than illegal. A lot of it has to do with not just, you know, bad behavior, but also murky laws, no laws, no enforcement of what laws do exist, and people can kind of do do as they please, and often that's not good. This Interpol purple notice, I've heard of the red notice where they're looking for like Bill Browder because he pissed off Vladimir Putin, but I haven't heard of a purple notice. I don't know what these, what these are.

Purple Notice is something that, you know, you have to work hard to get put on you. You know, these are sort of repeat scofflaw offenders. On ships, they essentially are a ship that for many years well documented is engaged, usually in either sanctions busting, you know, so North Korea, Venezuela, moving oil, moving arms to Yemen, human trafficking out of Columbia is often how those guys end up on there. And then illegal fishing and murder, you know, if we've got a vessel where a very well-documented case of murder has occurred. They've been on purple list. But essentially, it's a ship-based red notice and it's an arrest. Essentially, it's an arrest-on-site notice. The irony, of course, is that no one enforces it. Many of these ships have purple notices on them. They roll in and out of port.

They unload their illicit cargo and they go back out to sea, and other countries don't really check the list or even care if the name's on there. That's what didn't make any sense to me, Because if you've got a ship that's flagged in Liberia, but it's run out of China or, I don't know, whatever, sort of South Africa, and it's fishing illegally all over the place. Who do you call when you find that ship in the open ocean, either on a satellite or on transponder system,

or you just see it? You don't dial nine, what's the 911? Like, hey, I found this ship. It's got a purple notice on it. It's in Sierra Leone waters. Go get it. What is that even, that doesn't sound like that's even possible.

I mean, you've struck at the core challenge is, you know, laws are only as good as their enforcement, and there are no cops on the high seas. So there is no enforcement in this way. There are agreements and treaties and some laws that exist. So if you find a vessel that is a purple lister, the next big challenge, if you were a do-gooder, if you're a human rights lawyer, whatever, would be to figure out what country would care enough and who's got enough skin in that game. if it's a vessel that's tied to a, you know, a reputation vulnerable brand name, a Marish container ship, you know, for example, okay, now you're in the game because those guys care if their name shows up on the front page of the Washington Post. But most of the vessels out there

where the really dark stuff happen are not in that category. These are fishing vessels, not merchant marine, and there are no names that anyone could recognize. And then the other issue is if you're looking to try to get someone interested, you know, a lawyer or a cop in country X, and you need to figure out, okay, are there guys on that ship who are the culprits or the victims of the crime? Or did the crime happen against their waters, country access waters? Okay, usually the victims of the crimes are trafficked folks from real far away and these places are super poor. And so those countries don't have a robust history of political laws and lawyers that are ready to jump in the game, right? So that's going to be a tough way to go. And then the culprits, these might be middle, you know, second. to first, you know, world nations. So maybe you can find a country that wants to go after its own guys because they did something bad. But you have to know who to contact in that country and get them interested. And if they don't want to do it, they've got 10 ways to get out of it. Oh, well, that was on the high seas. Oh, well, that ship is flagged to another country so we don't

have jurisdiction. We have no boats. I don't have time. You know, a gazillion ways for them to step back. So you mentioned that people on the boats are often the victims and they're trafficked. So are we talking about, if I'm talking about sea poaching, illegal fishing, are we talking about, let's say, the captain of the boat is some American dude or whatever, but all the sailors are from Thailand, the middle of nowhere, and they can't do anything because they're, I don't know, 5,000 miles away from home and in the middle of the ocean and they're stuck. Is that kind of the situation?

Yeah, I mean, so your textbook ship here would be, it's a ship that's on the high seas, let's say, for sake of a second of a, example, near the South China Sea, it's a Thai vessel, it's got a crew of 40 guys. Four to five of those guys are officers and their tie. Then you have a boatsin who's the middleman. He's the crew manager. He's the scary dude. He administers the beatings and the killings and stuff like that. He usually speaks the language of the bosses and the language of the crew. The crew tends to be a different ethnicity. Those are migrant workers. On this ship, this made-up ship, we're talking about Cambodians, Loations, Rohingya, Burmese. So these are typically migrants who have been

trafficked into the country. They've debt bonded in, so they had their passports taken away. They earned a debt on the inbound because they didn't have any money to come in and get the job. And so then they're put on the vessel. The vessel goes way far from shore. Maybe they're all the way over near the coast of Somalia. Who knows where they are. So there are a gazillion reasons they can't get off. They don't have their passport. They don't even speak the language of the officers. They're 1,000 miles from home. They're off the coast of a pretty brutal area. they're not going anywhere. And that's your typical sea slavery situation.

It's crazy that they're sea slaves. And I've talked about the different types of flags on ships and how that's kind of a racket. I did an episode with this author that you probably know, Matthew Campbell. Smart guy. That was episode 739 about examining global shipping's kind of grim underbelly. But that was shipping.

We touched on the flag stuff. We didn't talk a whole lot about sea slavery. It sounds like a lot of what's being fished illegally is something called toothfish, which is really gross, until you find out the Chilean sea bass, which is really good. Indeed. So when I order this deliciousness at restaurants, am I contributing to sea slavery a lot of the time, or is it like that's not the fish I'm meaning?

Yeah, I mean, so Chilean sea bass, as you call it, you know, the hotel staple. Yeah. Indeed is a problematic target species. The sea slavery issue doesn't tie that much to it because those vessels are typically fishing down in the south, in the southern ocean, and those vessels, for various reasons, the ships cost a lot more, and the players in that market, and they're very automated. So usually the workers on those vessels are not sea slaves. The vessels that, you know, are more likely to be involved with slavery are older, poor, smaller vessels that aren't going to cold climates, because you can't

have a faulty ship that's barely seaworthy down in the southern ocean. You're all going to die. But you're looking at tuna vessels, long-line tuna vessels. You're looking at squid vessels or brutal, brutal vessels, fish meal, the stuff gets that fed to livestock. Those vessels are old, poor, migrant-dependent, you know, labor-intensive, not automated, and they're staying at sea for two years straight. And those vessels are your high-target sea slavery vessels. When you say they stay at sea for two years straight, how is that possible? I think a lot of people are going on, well, they've got to go into port, they've got to refuel,

they've got to get supplies. how are they at sea for two years straight? Or you just mean that they're in and out all the time? They're at sea for two years. So it's something called at sea trans shipment and submerged in the last decade, decade, and a half, two decades. And it's essentially, you know,

the backstory is interesting. It's an environmental story. As near-shore stocks collapsed, so as all the fish near shore, the easy catch disappeared, ships had to go further away. And if you look at the cost of a typical fishing operation,

labor and fuel are your biggest cost. So the further you go away, the tighter your margins, right? So if you're going really far away high seas fishing, your margins are negative. And so the only way you can kind of cut corners and actually make some money is don't come back to shore and use real cheap or free labor. Okay. So don't come back to shore looks like you send a mothership, a refrigeration vessel out to

wherever you are. She picks up all your catch. She delivers ice. She brings extra fuel. She brings tools, maybe a swap out of guys, but typically not. and then she brings it back, that mothership brings it back to shore, and you keep fishing the whole time. That saves a lot of money, but it's also a huge driver of captivity and neglect and abuse. So this to me, and tell me if I'm exaggerating, because I don't like hyperbole, it sounds like

you've got a floating prison, a floating alcatraz that gets fuel, food, other resources from other ships, and the ships that are violating the law, keeping slaves, whatever, they're floating in the middle of international waters where nobody's looking for them, nobody's enforcing anything, nobody maybe even can do anything. And the mothership comes back and says, I got all these totally legal fish from this other vessel that is none of your business

slash we're lying about where it is or we don't know if they're up to code. That's not my job. My job is to go get the fish and deliver a couple cans of fuel. That's all I know. We're a totally different company. That kind of thing.

And they're just away from authority for years and years and years and years. So nobody can jump overboard at a port and be like, I'm trafficked, help me. And they're like, Why did this guy jump off your boat? It's like, no, he's 3,000 mile or whatever, 1,000 miles offshore in a floating prison.

Is that accurate? It is accurate. I mean, again, since you and I share the desire to steer clear of hyperbole, the nuance here is to point out that, look, this is not all fishing vessels. We're talking about a small portion of the most brutal percentage, but it's real and it's not that small, right? But yes, the portion we're talking about is real. There are a lot of guys in this situation,

and indeed, you know, there was this saying one guy told, told me a worker, a deckhand said, you know, this work and this life is like prison with a salary except the salary is not guaranteed. And the other thing you say about you melded two things there, the experience of remove and captivity is real. And then furthermore, the sort of R as consumer experience, the sort of plausible deniability that Red Lobster or, you know, Chicken at the Sea or whatever, your local hotel can get away with through this globalized situation where folks and say, I don't know. I mean, there's no way for us to know because that stuff is happening way out there and it's getting handed off. That's by design. It's not inadvertent that like the marketplace

has allowed this to become the norm. It's quite beneficial for sellers of seafood to be able to say, we don't know really what's going on those vessels. That's not our concern. We just take the stuff from the reefer that arrive support. And that's the biggest problem. That's what makes seafood different from soccer balls or, you know, soybeans or anything that's on land. It's amazing you even found this stuff out because look, if Nike is making shoes or Apple is making iPhones, some investigative journalist is going to be like, hey, this is one of those plants. Look, they got suicide nets and there's police here and I got somebody that I know got an undercover job there and they managed to take hidden camera footage. That's not going to happen on a ship that has slaves. Right. You don't have a bunch of

hiring or people who can take photos with a telegraphic lens from far away. I mean, they're in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. No, I mean, you're right. Like a 13-year-old is shack or in a factory making soccer balls in some Amazon forest, eventually someone's going to find out where it's going to get out. Eventually, the government's maybe going to impose some sort of spot check system where they can go check and make sure folks aren't chained in there. And eventually the brands are going to be like, look, we don't want to be affiliated. Now come over to my universe, the high seas. The entire system was set up to not be able to do that. So, for example, one huge challenge is that factory in the middle of the Amazon, it's on Brazilian.

territory, there's Brazilian law, and there are Brazilian cops who you call, now go to the high seas. There are no laws that actually dictate labor standards on the work floor, on the factory that's floating out there. So it's like the space station, you know, like, and so even if you could get over the logistics of a spot check, a thousand miles from shore, someone was willing to put up the fuel and just show up and say, hey, you got any 13 year old shackled here? Then what? Like, who's prosecuting and based on what? Because, you're in a jurisdiction that doesn't really have clear rules. That's the big problem. The sort of noob question is, hey, aren't there ship transponders? How do we not just know where

these guys are? Don't we have satellites? We can look and find them. And if we know the ship is violating the law, why doesn't somebody go out there and try to do it? I mean, or are they, is it really that hard to find these ships? Do they just turn that location stuff off? Tell me about that. Yeah, I mean, again, intuitively, especially us who consume Hollywood stuff, It makes us think that that's super easy. Yeah. Enhance. You just say enhance and it zooms in on the ship and you see everything that's going on in real time. You swipe your thumb and forefinger out and zoom in. Right.

Yeah, no. So first of all, there are satellites up in the sky and there is some eyes on especially conflict zone regions. But that footage, the cost point of that footage is extremely high. It hasn't come down. And furthermore, the satellites that are up there are government or expensive private sector. So average folk, certainly poor nations, but even rich nations with NGOs who want to be able to see spaces, can't afford it. Okay, point one. Point two, there are not enough satellites up in the sky, so we don't have eyes on the entire sea space. There just isn't the infrastructure up there. Point three, the satellites that are up there bring you a level of granularity that's not enough to actually do anything with it. Okay, so you can lay eyes on a ship that's over in these North Korean waters breaking the UN sanctions. Okay, you can. You can, you can. You can, you can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can. You can can see a ship. Can you see which ship it is? No. Can you see the writing on the side of the ship so that it has a unique identifier, a license plate, so you can identify it? Most of those guys don't have those on the side. Okay. So there are lots of logistical challenges. And then that's coming one direction from sky down to water. From water up to sky, there is something called AIS. It's

transponders that transmit location, but you flip at the switch, you turn that off. And if you're doing bad stuff, most folks turn off their AIS most of the time they're at sea. And this is where you get into a fundamental cultural and legal difference between planes post 9-11, trains, trucks. You can't leave in a 747 from place X and go to place Y and not alert someone. Here's where I'm going. Here's what I'm carrying. Here are the names of the guys on board. You're going to see me the whole time.

Here's my ETA, et cetera. You cannot in this world fly something that big. In the fishing space, if you even ask those folks, hey, wait, why'd you go dark for three weeks? or could I get a crew manifest or what's the cargo you're carrying? Luke's captains will look at you like you're insane. Like, who are you? You know, so there's a cultural and legal difference

around fishing, distant water fishing that doesn't exist for any other mode of transport. I was watching some video from the New York Times the other day and they did some investigation where they found Winston Shipping was the name of the company and it was based out of Singapore and they were doing something like, take a ship from Taiwan or Fujian in China

and then go to, I can't remember, remember where and get oil. And suddenly they vanish for a week or two, but they found satellite photos of them in a port in North Korea, off the coast to North Korea, in international waters transferring the oil from a ship that they own to another ship that then that ship goes to North Korea or to Iran or some crazy crap like that. And the investigation was really incredible. They had found that the guy who owns the boats turned out to be this like small time nobody who lives in a little like a shack. But that guy had at one time worked for this big company and all the other shipowners and all these subsidiary owners, they all grew up in the same village and went to elementary

and middle school together. And there's like photos of them as kids hanging out. And it's really good investigation because you're like, damn, they went to some village in Fujian China, found out that these guys all knew each other from back in the day and used to play whatever, tetherball. And now they own an international smuggling ring where one guy probably runs the shipping company and the other guys either just sit around with signing documents with their names on the ship or they work at the same place and have real jobs. It's crazy the length that these folks will go. And those guys, to be fair to China, which isn't always the good guy in my show, especially, these guys have all fled China because it's organized crime. I mean, it's just mafia stuff.

Yeah. But it's crazy how complex this stuff is. The sanctions busting. And it's amazing that nobody can really do anything. And this is North Korea where they're shipping oil into a nuclear power, to a nuclear country. So fishing is like not even a blip on the radar of let's go and force this. Yeah. Fishing is such a weird thing. There's an island in Greece called Kios. It's in the book, but it's a very similar place. It's an obscure island, and 40 to 50 percent of the major shipping magnets are from this island. They all know each other, and no one talks to outsiders. Again, arms trafficking, oil smuggling, human smuggling, even just elicit cigarettes, whatever industry you want to name has a black market, and there's a good chance that the best way to move that

black market good is by water. Just because of what we're talking about, right? No enforcement, huge quantities, the end. Exactly. Yeah, and probably decently low cost compared to flying it on a plane. Right, but it's got so many other amenities, flag state convenions, et cetera, that it's the best way to move stuff. It's weird that in this modern age, the OG way of traveling turns out to also be the most effective because you're thinking like we have Bitcoin and we have all these illicit digital things and we can fly through space and it's like no let's put it on wait for it a boat and no one will be able to do anything about it it's like wait this is ridiculous they have to go to a port they're super slow tons of people work on them they're old and rusty and they're just kind of floating along

and this is the best way to smuggle people drugs cigarettes fish guns this is it yeah it's like too simple I almost don't want to believe it. It's the boiling, the frog thing. It's like law enforcement is expecting, you know, the intruders to come at them fast and furious. You know, they're going to bring that Coke in by drone. No, no, no. They're going to walk really slowly. And they're going to come not to the main port, but the one five miles over to the east.

Because at 11 o'clock, that dude's asleep. And they can unload 40 shipping containers of whatever they want. It's just that simple. Who profits from the piracy and illegal fishing stuff? Because at first I was like, we got to put the hammer down on these captains. But then as an attorney, I'm like, well, there's some unsure company that's got bankers, lawyers, and 500 other people working for each of these giant oil tankers that comes in smuggling illicit goods, right?

Yeah, I mean, the benefits are decentralized. It's sort of called globalization. You know, like, I've heard of that. And so, you know, yes, the biggest company, players categorically in the fishing space, the distant water fishing space will be the seafood company that's actually like tied to the fishing vessels and usually the reefer, the refrigeration vessel. Usually there's an ownership connection there. Those guys are making big money because they're moving stuff on tonnage. And they often usually have multiple dots in the supply chain.

So they got the boat, they got the reefer and they got the processing plant. Okay, there's big money in that. And then the other beneficiaries, if we're really honest, are you and me and, and the Western buyers, right, who are getting this stuff insanely cheap and fast and huge quantities, and they're making money on the front end of selling it, they are big beneficiaries of all this illegality. It's the only way that they could be possibly getting

that stuff so cheap is by these cut corners. You mentioned earlier fishing at extreme, was it latitudes, kind of the southern ocean. Is that south-south, like by Antarctica south? Is that what we're talking about? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I've been on those vessels down there.

and yeah, that's exactly where they are. You're going to find toothfish. You've been on those vessels. What is it like? Is it deadliest catch but in real life or is it worse? I mean, it sounds, I mean, cold, first of all. Yeah, I mean, so I went on a long in bed on a ship out of Punta Arenas, Chile, a toothfish vessel, you know, Chilean captain, a couple of Spanish officers and the rest Chileans, just to see what that life was like. It's pretty amazing.

Those waters down there, Drake's passage in particular, is this one latitude, where it's the only spot on planet Earth where there's no land that breaks up winds and waves and they can traverse the entire circumference of the globe if they stay in that 45 degree latitude. And so they get damn big. You know, 90 mile winds, 100 mile winds are pretty common and massive waves. So Drake's Passage is why it's where most ships sink historically because it's insane down there. So that was epic to experience crossing Drake's Passage to get down to Antarctica. I was on a vessel that wasn't a C-Slee vessel.

It wasn't, this was a highly automated, you know, super clean, amazing ship. But it's this massive, weird Dickensian factory setting. There was a whole second deck was a, you know, kind of Willy Wonka kind of conveyor belt style factory where this six and a half, 10 foot fish, these monster fish that are as ugly as sin. That's why they were renamed from toothfish to Chilean sea bass, you know, moves down this conveyor belt. And these guys with these massive knives are just like slicing and dicing. by the time it gets all the way to the end, it's just little squares. The reason I went there was there's this phenomena where the killer whales and Minky whales in particular, but also sperm whales have figured out that there's a sort of a floating diner and all you can eat diner in the form of these ships.

And when they are dragging a 40-mile line behind them to catch the toothfish and they let it sit and drag for a week and it fills up with half a million dollars worth of catch, The minute they start pulling that line up to the ship, the winch makes a certain sound. And literally a dozen whales who have been following your ship the whole time, go at it. And they rip into the line and eat virtually everything from the line. The whales have gotten smart and only started doing this in the last decade. And the captains throw dynamite. They fire shotguns. They try to poison.

They've tried everything. But it's just, that's the story that most attracted me. It was like, this is crazy. There's a man versus animal war going on out there. And the whales are winning. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Ian Urbina. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing folks for the show,

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You can find the course at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Now, back to Ian Urbina. I don't love the idea that a fisherman is trying to poison things as they're also reeling up my dinner. That seems not super safe. I mean, the shotgun pellet is a little worrisome, but the poisoning thing and the killing of orcas who are in their own water eating their own sort of prey

is also a little bit. Seems unfair. Seems unfair, yeah. Wow, I can't, this is, that is crazy. That is an attractive story, except for the part about living on a ship that could get you killed and freezing to death in the water. That's why you're, that's why you have that job. And I sit here in my pajamas doing podcasts.

The way you describe it is really wild. There was a, in the book, you mentioned you jumped into his skiff. and the boats moving, but the skiff, which is a small boat for those who don't know, is also moving in these waves. And you can't stop the boats at this point in time.

I can't remember why, but you can't just stop and get in this thing and lower it. It's like you're jumping in there. But if you fall overboard, you're totally dead. There's no way they can get you, one, the boat's moving,

but two, it's freezing and there's waves. I would never do it. Do you have kids? What are you thinking? Why would you do that? My wife actually feed you these lines. It just occurred to me. No, I mean, you're quite right.

Like, of the, People are like, wow, it sounds so dangerous. Aren't those people going to kill you? And I'm like, actually, the two things that are most dangerous are exactly the thing. Ship transfer is insane and super dangerous and one wrong move and you're dead. And then infection, you know, on the really bad vessels, not the toothfish vessels, but the sea slave vessels that we're getting on rats and roaches and you're there for weeks. And it's just so unhygienic that you can get really sick.

But yeah, those ship transfers are sort of insane. and it's sort of, I mean, I just, in this current investigation, you don't want to stop the ship because on very high seas, if you stop a ship, things get way worse. It's like a bicycle, right? You know, like when you're in forward motion, you're actually moving less because you're cutting waves and the engine is keeping you at a steady momentum that's flat. But if you stop, if you were to cut your engine, now you're a ping pong in a bathtub and you're getting, or washing machine getting really tossed. So you never want to cut off your engines if you could have. avoid it. You don't even want to drop anger if you can avoid it. So that's why if you're going to do

a transfer, you want to be moving somewhat. But getting the synchronicity right between a small boat that's literally three stories down, the steel side of you and you and you're going up and down and they're going up and down and trying to figure out when's the right moment to jump across, that's really risky. I'm cringing. And if you're watching the YouTube version, I'm sitting here like touching my face in a very anxious way thinking about jumping down from a huge three story tall vessel, I can't, that's nightmare fuel, man. Your wife didn't need to feed me these lines. That's too, that's too much for me. I can't handle it. Do we know what percentage of fishing is illegal? Any idea? The number that gets bandied about is one in five, and that's a number that, I can't remember who.

20% of fishing is illegal? Yeah, 20% of stuff that ends up on American plates. Wow. Is IU is illegally caught. That probably means more then, right? Because if you're in the United States, which theoretically maybe kind of sort of cares about this, then what percentage of my fish if I'm eating dinner in Cambodia is legally caught? I don't know about that. Yeah. That might even be more dodgy. Yeah, no, I think the number is going to be, that's going to be a very low-end floor.

The other thing that makes it low-end is the typical term is IUU, illegal, unregulated, unreported. So the you and the you refer to places where there just isn't law. So it's not officially illegal, but it's completely unsustainable. if you look at IUU and you look at other places that don't really care, you know, about trying to track their imports, then you're only going to go up from 20%. So fishing companies, abuses of workers, environmental policies, it seems like we just can't stop these repeat offenders. I know there's boats like the Sea Shepherd that will ram them and whatnot, which is, I mean, also illegal, but it's one of those where you're kind of like golf clap, right? You know, look, go get them. Nobody else is going to bother. Yes, it's illegal and you're probably technically a terrorist.

we also get it. It seems like being on the inside of this, you have whistleblower issues, right? Because if you're a captain and you go, hey, my boss is asking me to do illegal stuff, can you ever be a captain anywhere again in your whole life? Yeah. So in some instances, there are, in some places in the world, there are requirements that there are fishery observers on board. And these are sort of third party players who are supposed to be there. Those observers are fishery observers. So they're focused on the fishing issues, not the labor issues, right? And so they're looking at, are you going places you're not allowed to be? Are you using the wrong type of gear? Are you having bycatch? Are you targeting sharks that are, you know, protected species, et cetera? They're looking at fishery issues.

Is your tonnage right to your quota, you know, these sorts of things? And they're keeping a little binder. They are a guest in a hotel they don't own, right? So like those guys and women have to be pretty darn careful. And some fishery observers have been disappeared from vessels. It's a very dangerous line of work. Fishing is the world's most dangerous profession. But that's one thing that does exist. You know, there's a push for onboard cameras. And there are, you know, C. Shepherds got eight ships, you know, and Greenpeace has ships and there are. And then U.S. Coast Guard and other kind of coastal nations are increasingly trying to find ways to not just protect the security of their border, but also think about food security and not just in their waters,

but other partner nations. They're having a more holistic look at this issue. So key players are inching into the space. But again, like you said, you're a deckhand. You see some shady stuff go down. Maybe you capture some cell phone footage. But like the evidentiary findings, what you have to prove is very weak if you can even find someone willing to do anything with it.

It happened way over there, way long ago, with proof being this shaky cell phone footage. So it's a tough thing. And you might get blacklisted, as you say. Yeah. Speaking of shady stuff with cell phone footage, didn't you, was this in the book, somebody had filmed like a murder of, I guess, crew members? What was that all about? Yeah, so this was a story that began, I sort of began investigating in 2015. I had gotten a video sent to me by a source of Interpol who knew I was interested in maritime crime. It's a 10-minute, 26-second long sort of slow-motion slaughter captured on the cell phone. That cell phone had been found

in the back of a taxi in Fiji by some random passenger and handed over to the police. The video shows this kind of situation on waters where it's unclear, but essentially some guys with semi-automatic weapons on what turned out to be a Taiwanese two in a long liner are doing target practice on these other guys in the water. The guys in the water are five that you see over the course of the video. They're all killed one-by-one headshots. And then the most shocking thing, to me at least, is at the end of the video, So the witnesses or the culprits, we don't know, but folks on deck of the shooters turn the camera on themselves and sort of celebrate for selfies and sort of party down and let the bloodletting.

Gross. So that video was like really disturbing. And that began an eight year long investigation we did. And ultimately that led to a front page piece in the Washington, New York Times on the front end and then on the tail end, the front page piece in the Washington Post. And the captain of that vessel who ordered the killings, was caught and arrested and is behind bars now. That's so gross. And also, I want to highlight that the only reason they got them is because some idiot filmed it, turned the camera, filmed himself, then kept the video on his phone, then got drunk and left it in a cab, then someone else found that, went through the phone, which I would never do if I found

a frigging phone, found that, then had the sort of emotional intelligence to go, wow, this is a crime and probably an unprosecuted one, unresolved murder, I should turn this in. And then somebody else did something with it. I mean, it's like miracle after miracle. Right. And then one guy goes to prison for this murder that probably happens all the, this type of murder that happens maybe all the time. Yeah, you're spot on by lining up all those and then and then and then and then. Yeah. And then the last then is in some ways the darkest and that the dude on the ship, who's probably not even making decisions himself, he's taking orders from on land. The captain goes to jail. So the private maritime security guys wielding the guns, their name never came out.

never even questioned, much less charge, and now go to the opposite extreme. The owner of the fishing company is some big player in Taiwan, scot-free, you know, like, so no penalties, no fines, no prison time for the true beneficiary. The crappy captain probably is barely making ends meet. Now his life is ruined. He deserved to be behind bars, but you're right. You know, this is just not necessarily a full success story. It's just a fluke. Right. And you've got to be dumb enough to film your crime and then basically handed over to prosecutors to even get this sort of, what do you call, sacrificial lamb locked up. Right. That's it. I know you wrote about stowaways, and I was surprised to hear that this still exists. Who is stowing away now? It sounds like something you see in a pirate cartoon.

What's amazing is there are a couple of key locations, especially in Africa, but other places too. And one of them is in South Africa and Cape Town, and it's a specific port. Why it's a magnet for storeways? I don't know. But that it is, is for sure, because we actually embedded a videographer and two videographers to live with these guys for a long time. And for, I think, going on four weeks, our folks were living in the shantytown where everyone there was stowing away. Wow. They were right next to the port, and they knew how to get to the port, and they were watching for key ships to roll into Cape Town and then sneak through the fence. And 90% of these guys are from Tanzania. I've never gotten an answer of why so many Tanzanias do this, as opposed to other

countries. But bottom line is it's sort of a roll of the dice. It's an adventure. It's a bragging rights chance to sort of go someplace else, anywhere else that might be better. And they don't know typically where that ship is headed when they get on board. They just sort of know that it's a big ship and they think they know how they can get on board and it looks like it's going to go someplace else. So we looked at one showway in particular who he and his buddy, it didn't go so well. They got rafted. They got put on a raft once they were at sea by the crew and sort of left in the middle of the ocean to die. What? That's a whole another nightmare. So they find you what in the engine room or something and they're like, well, we can't keep these guys in the

boat. So they put you in a lifeboat and they just cut you loose? Yeah. And in this case, it's sort of like from the perspective of those who do it. Like in this case, there's a ship called the Dona Liberta. These are two Tanzanians. And they discovered the guys. They locked them down. The captain told the crew, build a raft, they, you know, oil drums on some tabletop, no handles, no, they put that in the water, they march the guys up, knife point, say, climb down, get on the raft, they cut the thing. Why they do it is partially, they don't want to, in this instance, they don't want to kill the guys, because that just feels maybe a step further than they want to go ethically. I would rather get killed than left out on the ocean to roast to death

and dehydrate and then die. Thanks anyway. Well, these guys, then that's exactly what happened to one of the two. I mean, and so they cut them loose. There's a storm on the horizon. They were like about eight miles from land. So they thought, well, the currents will push them in the land, but we won't, we the captain of the Donal-Lavirpah, we won't pay the fine for having rolled in with folks that aren't supposed to be on ship because that's going to be a delay and a fine and I might get fired. So I'm not going to take that heat for these guys. But on the other hand, I don't want to kill them. I don't want to slip their throat. So let's put them on a raft and hope for the best. So that's what they did with these guys. They drifted around. Those guys eventually washed up on Liberian shores.

one of them died like within the hour and the other survived and we ended up finding him and built a story around his story. That's truly terrible. Why is it, why does it cost money if you roll in? It seems like that's backwards. Hey, this guy stowed away on our ship. Maybe he gets arrested and deported, but not like, oh, now you have to pay for it. That seems dumb. Yeah, I mean, post-9-11, everyone, the world got scared, right? And around the same time, the sort of anti-immigration, anti-migrant thing was kicking up. And those two, things together resulted in the port fronts being higher fences, more penalties if you roll in with folks that aren't supposed to be on your ship. So everyone was like super security conscious.

And the U.S. pushed a lot of these rules on other ports because if you're going to let stuff come into our ports, we don't want a dirty bomb on there. We don't want undocumented immigrants on your ship. And you guys have to sweep your ship before you go to shore. And if you don't, you pay the price. So the fine structure went way up. And that fine goes to companies. Companies drifts out, you know, puts the pressure on captains. Captains turns crew and when the ship's about to leave Cape Town, Captain turns the crew and says, it's coming out of your wage if you don't sweep the ship property. And if there are any stowaways that pop up a week later, that's on you. So you guys better sweep the ship really well. These are huge ships. So two

football field-sized ships. So you can hide anywhere. And so guys slip through all the time. And then this is why, you know, people, everyone gets all scared that they're going to get hit with charges for illegal immigration. They're going to hit with fines. Oh, my God. I mean, I can understand the temptation to punch someone in the face if they stow away on your ship or feed them poorly, but I can't really, I can't justify letting them die a slow painful death. I mean, look, they're economic migrants or something like that, I guess, but man, that just seems, it seems so backwards. I know that there are anti-stowaway companies that can take them off. How do these companies work? This is a very unique niche that I, you know, speaking of things you never know exist. Yeah, I mean, those companies are hired by the

wealthier shippers. And it's often built into maybe your high, your premium insurance package. And the insurance package says, okay, if we're going to insure you guys, you got to have this company sweep your ships whenever you roll into this list of ports because there's no stowaway activity. So then these guys fly in and they handle the sweeping. But they also, more interestingly to me, at least, is they handle the crisis management after if someone slips through. And what that means is these companies, you call it, ah, someone snuck by, he's on my ship. What do I do? Bossman calls the contractor. Contractor says, I'll fly a couple guys who got Langward specialties to X and we'll meet you there. And those guys handle the Stoweway and they like know all the tricks of the trade.

Because Stoway will do what a lot of migrants will do and you and I would do the same. You strip all your national identity, your name, anything so that you can't be sent back home. They don't know where you're from, you then become an easier refugee if you can claim you're from Sudan, but you're actually from Liberia or whatever. So these companies come in and they try to troubleshoot the situation and they actually escort the stowaway to the airport and fly them all the way back home and they handle all the crisis so that that ship can quicker get out of port and your company doesn't have to deal with it. If delays are that expensive, I would assume there's a whole sub-economy out there of people who find ways to delay ships and basically extort them so they can

go about their business. Is that a thing that happened? It's why you have a maritime repo industry. So delays all the way down to lockdowns are this true phenomena where a huge number of ports are sort of rife with really corrupt shady characters. And some of them are local judges and port officials. And they may hit you with some, you know, $5 million fine because you bumped a pier and your ship's worth a million. You know, so they're like, you're just trying to steal my ship through white collar means. And that's where you hire repo men. And the repo men fly in.

and they start with kind of soft power. You know, they sit down and say, look, you know, can I get you a case of Jack Daniels and 20K? You know, let's work this out. You know, this is kind of crazy. And if that doesn't work, then they do extractions. And that means they assemble a team and they basically steal the ship back out to sea

and they steal in the middle of the night. And I went on a couple of repos with these guys and they were doing just that. And it's pretty insane stuff. I would have a person like that on my show to talk about stealing, I mean repossession lawfully ships. That would be a hell of a problem.

I think, too. You know anybody like that? I've got the guy for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the guy is, yeah, Max Hardberger. His name is straight out of his name literally is Max Hardberger. He lives in a trailer in Alabama, and he's an amazing interview. And he's, yeah, so I'll send him your way. Yeah, that would be great. And it's so funny that he lives in a trailer in Alabama, but he's probably a millionaire from repossessing ships. But he doesn't need a, doesn't need a big house, always on the ocean. No, exactly. He's a good old country boy, and he just likes a good time. And I think he's never got

more than, you know, $2,000 in his account. burns through the rest. Yeah, the officials in corrupt country or corrupt officials delaying boats. How much does it cost to have, I don't know, a fishing boat, an oil tanker stuck in a port for a day that should already be gone with its load? Do you know? Well, we're talking like 20 to 50,000 a day if we're talking about a container ship. Okay. Ship that's got multi-million dollar cargo, so grain, oil, the contracts are often built with penalty structures for delays that are

lofty. They're really, because there's a spot market that predicts when the stuff is supposed to arrive and when it gets on the market. And if you kick that back, anyway, so, but the smaller ships, it's all relative, right? 20,000 a day to Marisk is pocket change, but 20,000 a day to a fishing vessel that could put them out of business with a two-week delay. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Ian Urbina. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other considerate and smart, intelligent listeners do, and I'm sure you fall into that bucket, take a moment and support one of our amazing sponsors. All the deals discount codes and ways to support the show are at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also ask our almost super smart

AI chatbot and getting smarter every day AI chat bot on the website at Jordan Harbinger.com slash AI. Thanks for supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Ian Urbina. So do people steal ships? I don't mean repossessing the ship. I mean actually hijacking the ship for ransom like Somali pirates kind of, but actual ship theft where they use the boat. If it's open ocean and it's totally lawless,

why not just steal a boat and then use it and make money with that for the rest of the life of the boat? So one lexicon issue, boat versus ship, a boat can go on a ship, a ship can't go on a boat. So that's the simple way to remember the two words. And so boats like cigarette liner yachts down in Florida are stolen to an insane degree. Most of the boat thefts in the U.S. occur out of Florida and they're stolen for the sake of people moving and drug trafficking and they get taken out of Florida down to the Caribbean or Columbia or wherever and Venezuela.

And so there's a lot of in the U.S. boat fevery for a very specific purpose. Now, ship thievery globally, yes, for sure happens. Often it's various scenarios. one is, you know, off the coast of Nigeria, off the coast of Somalia on the other side of the continent. They steal a large vessel and they dual purpose it. One, they take the guys and all their goods. They sell the ransom on the guys and sell the goods. But then they have a boat that's pretty strong.

And they use that as a mother ship for quick hit other hits, you know, where they have smaller boats that are usually de-housed. These are fishing boats that are outboard motors. They're not real strong and powerful. And they can't hold a lot of fuel. So now they have a base of operations because they stole some big fishing vessel and they park it way out there in the avenue. And then they live there and then they have a bunch of small boats. And when they see folks rolling through their neighborhood, if you will, they jump in the small boats and they chase the guys.

And then if they catch them, then they got another mother ship or they've got something to ransom. That is wild. Are the ships to go fishing or is it like we're just stealing it for ransom? Maybe they do somewhere in the world, not that I know of. I don't know any stories. Okay. I was just curious. Yeah.

Because it just seems to me, if you can steal anything and use it with impunity and no one's going to come after you, I'm stealing a fishing boat. And then I'm going to enslave a crew because why pay for anything, right? Yeah, I mean, the scenario where fishing boats might get stolen are more your white collar scenario where an amazing fishing vessel comes into dock. It unloads its cargo. Your cousin's the local judge and your brother is the port captain. You scheme up some scenario to lock it down. You bankrupt those guys. You kick them out of your country. And then now you officially can flip that ship, resell it for 50 bucks. And now your brother's got a kick-ass, you know, fishing vessel. Wow. And maybe he knows how to fish. But that's like a triple bank shot in pool. There are a lot of easier straight shots, if you will. Sure.

One thing that amazed me was some companies just abandoning entire boats and ships, sometimes even with the crew aboard because the company goes bankrupt or how is that possible? How is that possible? How do you just go, hey, we don't have enough fuel to get you home? Good luck, guys. And they're floating. How is that possible? It's a huge problem.

It's a slow motion crime and tragedy. And so it gets very little coverage, considering how common it is, because the crime is against the guys on board. They're stuck there. They have no way to get off. They have no way to get home. They don't have papers. They don't have cell reception anymore. Their family thinks they're dead.

They're gone for a year and they're stuck. They don't have food, water. It's serious. Guys die, go crazy. How it happens is you're an owner of a fleet and one of your fleet is old. It's barely going to make it another year. It's not covering its costs, right? your upkeep and your repairs are outweighing its catch. And then something happens. The final

thing breaks, you know, and your mechanic says that's going to cost more than the ship is worth. And that's when you make a calculation or someone sues you and you're like, oh, wow, we're going to, we need to declare bankruptcy and walk away or someone buys you and you're like, okay, we need to sell it. And then the new guy comes in and he's a cutthroat and he's like, ah, I'm just going to cut. I'm not even going to play with those dudes anymore. The fifth ship, we're just going to leave it wherever it is, Fiji. I don't care. Walk away from it. And so because of the way that maritime works and the way that ownership structures are sort of a Russian doll, you know, it's like shells upon shells upon shells, it's sort of a paperwork exercise to disconnect yourself with the ownership. And it's not that hard

to just sort of dump it wherever it is and walk away. And if they're guys on board, you dump them too. And that's when they are desperate. So what do they do? Are they literally out at sea and they got to, they're just stuck there? Usually they're close to. ashore, you know, most of these cases happen, well, they pop up on my radar or the radar of all these seafarer do-gooder organizations, mission to seafarers, and when they get near to shore. But oftentimes that's because the guy who's running the ship and his crew of 20, he's calling and they're not picking up the phone. And he's like, hey, where are we supposed to go next? What's going? There's such and such broke. What do you want us to do about it? Which port should we take it in?

Are you going to free up the budget to get it fixed, et cetera? And no one's answering their calls. So time passes, rations drop, fuel drops. He starts having to make decisions on his own. He's like, we got to get out of the sea and get near shore, even if we can't get all the way in port. So they come five, six, 12 miles from shore and drop anchor because it's a little bit safer, right, for them. They can't get off the ship because they don't have papers. So usually when these cases pop up, they're right near shore, but in some godforsaken place where no one's really willing to help them. And that's when the network of folks who troubleshoot these cases get involved.

raise the money, fly the guys home, get the government to play a ball. But the companies just are long since gone and walk away. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I can't even imagine. Because I would, I mean, if I could see land, I would just at some point I have to jump off the boat, right? I'm dehydrated. I'm starving to death. There's rats everywhere, whatever. Or maybe I ate them all. I'm not even trying to be funny. I mean, I guess that's what you do, right? And you just try to swim for it. Oh, it's so horrible. People do that. Yeah. It's not rare to hear cases of drowning and they were 500 meters from shore because they don't know how to swim and they got so desperate. They just jumped over.

and try to flail their way. That's truly horrible. A lot of this is truly horrible. And people think, oh, in the intro, when you said this is the bottom of humanity, some people thought I was exaggerating, but this is what I'm talking about. I mean, this is just really, really disgusting. The sea slavery stuff, really disturbing, as we talked about before, how do those people get recruited for this? Do you know how they end up on the boat? What happens before they end up on the boat, I guess, is what I'm asking. A typical story, not to beat up on the South China Sea or Thailand, but imagine this model wherever, right? So in the case of That area. You've got Thailand, which is a middle class country, less than 2% unemployment,

and it's surrounded by a bunch of countries that are a wreck, right? So, Laos, Cambodia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, much poorer countries, often serious ethnic violence. So now you're 22-year-old guy who lives in some village in Cambodia. You don't know anything about how you might feed your three siblings. The rice patties aren't doing it for you. And you meet someone one day at some whatever festival or at the local bar. And he's like, look, I can get your job in Thailand in construction. Okay, now you light up because you know construction can pay, and especially Thai wages, you could earn in a year enough to keep your family afloat for five years. So you're like, yeah, it sounds great, but I don't have any money to get into Thailand. He's like,

don't worry about that. Meet me on this location on Sunday, et cetera, and just become ready. You jump in the back of the truck, you show up on Sunday, you start this long journey, illicitly across the border. He pays off that guy at the border. He pays off the next guy. Suddenly, two weeks later, you got maybe 20 other guys with you in the truck. and now you're at the port, and you're wondering, where's the construction job? And next thing you know, those guys are muscled up, they got guns. You saw them beat up some dude in front of you the other night. They're not messing around, and they said, get on the vessel.

And you get on the vessel, off you go to sea. That is a very typical story. You thought you were going in for one thing. You willingly signed on. You were going to be debt bonded in the first place, and now you're just captive and debt bonded, and off you go, and next thing you know, you're there for two years. This is kind of the story of all human trafficking, right?

You reply to a job ad, you show up and you end up working in a scam call center or on a boat. And you're just like, I thought I was going to be a tour guide for, or whatever. I thought I was going to be building houses or whatever. Oh, man. A nanny. Yeah, the women in these cases are like, look, you can be a domestic. You're cleaning house and taking care of the kids. No, no, you're going to a brothel.

And you're not going to realize that two weeks in. And you're a little, you know, small villager. You're not savvy to the ways of the world. You're not watching TV and surfing the Internet and learning these stories. So you're just like, oh, that sounds good. And off you go, and next thing you know, you're in some horrible place. I heard that the karaoke bars slash brothels have some weird role where guys get into debt and they're kind of living there. Tell me about that.

Yeah. So Renong, you know, went to this border town in Thailand right along the border. And yet, very dark kind of ring of hell where the karaoke bars, which are downstairs a bar and upstairs a brothel, are all worked by the very migrants that have been traffic. and the women and girls, and a lot of them are girls, like 12-year-old girls, are upstairs. And the men who are from the same villages often are sort of told to stay there because the truck is leaving in three days to just kill some time. What they don't realize is that the carousing at the bar and partaking of the girls

is running up a tab. They thought it was sort of a, I don't know, a freebie, you know, or maybe she liked me or whatever. There was no money exchange. They didn't realize this was transactional. Lo and behold, they find out maybe, you know, when they get to the port that, oh, by the way, you owe X amount, which is like six months of wages because of what you did at the brothel. And the girls are there against their will and the guys are there against their will and they're

being leveraged against each other to sort of be entrapped, both of them even deeper. It's really dark. That's super dark. Oh, my God. That's really truly awful. Tell me about these prison islands. This is something that I hadn't quite. Again, let's dive deeper into the dark side of, I mean, this is even worse. And I feel bad I'm taking

people down this journey, but I think it's important people know about this stuff because we're eating cheap seafood because of this. Okay, so the seminal work on prison islands is really done by the AP. They want to pulitzer for it. And sort of the name that people know is a place called Benjina. And it was known before by journalists that a common tactic for ensuring that your labor doesn't run away is to drop them off on an atoll or some obscure island. Maybe you got guys there who will keep an eye on those workers. Maybe you don't, but it's so remote that they're not going anywhere. But you drop them off because maybe you have to bring the port into a bigger city dock and you don't want to run the risk. You got to fix something. The captain wants a night out at the

brothel, whatever, but you don't want to bring all your workers into port because you might lose them. You drop them off on one of these islands. Benjina was one of those islands and AP found it and revealed, you know, these guys were in actual prison cells on this island. That was a court, is not a state-run facility. This was just, and these were captive workers who were being held there so that they could be redeployed on other vessels from the same company or dispatch other. So, again, these things are hard to believe

that they exist, but they exist. So essentially, you drop your crew off in the middle of nowhere on a deserted island and somebody's feeding them and giving them water while you take the boat into the situation where these guys might have escaped. And at that point, they're glad to get back on the boat because otherwise they're going to rot to death

on this deserted island. Oh, my God. Yeah. I was going to ask about oil dumping and dumping waste, you know, cruise lines and things like that. That's not even the appetizer

from what we're talking about with the slavery and the depravity here. Yeah, the human stuff is pretty intense. Again, the seafarer abandonment, the slow motion mental health, like ruin of that stuff,

not to mention the acute, like, murder and rape and slavery is shocking. And again, these crimes often handed, and glove connect in that, you know, a lot of the vessels that are engaging in the most egregious and repeat illegal fishing also just happen to be engaged in these other things. Why? Because of the finances. They're cutting corners. It's not because, I mean, yeah, there might be evil people

out there, but that's not motivation enough or sustainable. It's really like an economic reality, which requires end-of-life vessels and companies to try to cut at corners extra deep, and this is what that looks like. Tell me about the cruise line. The math. Magic pipe. Tell me about magic pipes. The magic pipe is a term to refer to what, in essence, is sort of a tube that goes from here to there in the engine room. Oftentimes, there may be four or five feet long, and it's a redirect, right? So the really dirty stuff on a ship is the sludge. It's the sediment that remains from the dirty oil that ships use, black oil. And it's gray water, poop and pee and

you know, food mass, all that stuff condenses down into this nasty stuff that you cannot dump at sea. It's really toxic. And you have to hold on to it and bring it back to a processing plant onshore. But that takes time. It costs a lot of money, et cetera. So the way to deal with that is run a magic pipe. And a magic pipe essentially redirects that stuff out of the container, out of the storage tank, into the bottom of the ocean. And so it's like a hidden pipe underneath the vessel and you just flush it. And you're flushing it as you go. You know, more ships dump intentionally. A lot of ink has been spread on the BP and the Exxon Valdez spills.

You know, those are accidents, you know, terrible accidents and avoidable accidents. But intentional dumping of oil is more than the Valdees and the BP spill combined. Every three years, ships globally intentionally dump more oil than those two spills combined. So it's a really deep overlooked problem. I didn't realize the quantity was that high. And I suppose we find out about this from whistleblowers who go, why is there a pipe that goes from this down to here when it's supposed to be in this holding tank?

Or why is our holding tank empty we've been at sea for a month, that kind of thing? Yeah, whistleblowers on board. And then also satellite whizbangs. You know, there's an amazing outfit called Sky Truth that's pioneered this stuff. And they're looking, using satellites to look at, you know, streaks on the ocean. These streaks that are left behind the ships, you know,

can show up on satellites and they last for 40 miles. And if you know what you're doing, you can figure out, wait, so that streak lasts for 40 miles, what ships were on that trajectory 20 hours ago? And then they connect the dots and like, okay, that ship caused that streak. And that streak is not an accident. That's them dumping. Now let's figure out how we can catch up with that ship. And that's the other way that these guys get caught sometimes.

It's just crazy. It seems like it's not just about the economy, though. I know that South China Sea fishing has some sort of political sea claim kind of thing going on. In the last sort of five minutes, can you tell us about that a little bit? Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of places on the planet, again, for the reasons we talked about before, like the sea and the high seas, especially are this weird space where it's not clear who owns them and who polices them. And some places that are national waters from the shore to 200 out are claimed, but there are a lot of places where different countries claim the same territory. And so in the case of the South China Sea, one of the hottest zones around, a bunch of different countries have claimed certain patches and certain atolls, certain little plops of land. And so it's a real contested area.

And China's the big dog in that area and so big that they are building islands. You know, like if you have an island that is yours, you now have the ocean 200 miles out from it. So if you pop an island out in one spot that's connected, then you've just expanded your, it's a, you know, kind of territorial expansion. So on the South China Sea, you've got a lot of ships staring each other down and blocking each other. And often that those fights play out with fishing vessels. So there's proxy fights between big nations that are happening in clashes between fishing vessels. That to me shouldn't be surprising after everything we've just talked about.

But it does seem odd that you can be like, well, we fish here. So this is now our territory, even though the map says differently. Yeah, I mean, maps are based in time, right? So when are you going to start your legal story? You're a lawyer. So you know this, like precedent. Yeah. So if you're like, look, we've got historical precedent going back 200 years.

My guys have been fishing this. So there's, you know, possessions, nine tenths the law. and we've been possessing this zone for a long time. So it's really ours. And that's creating facts on the ground what various countries are trying to do, especially China these days. And the more recent players are like,

no, no, no, we've been here for the last 40 years. And it doesn't matter. We've been here for the last 600. And you're like, yeah, but not actually fishing. And the South China Sea, you have 250 Chinese fishing vessels. They don't fish. They never put nets in the water. They're paid by the Chinese government to occupy

and they're fishing vessels officially, but they're civilian militia vessels, and they're just trying to create precedent. Look, people are going to ask me, and I know you've got to go. Is there any way for us to avoid seafood that is caught using slavery or crazy environmental violations?

I've heard of greenwashing where they put the seal on, but it's just some, they just made the organization and gave themselves the award for a clean, sustainable seafood. We know that's bullshit. Is there anything that's not?

Yes and no is my best answer. I think that there's a spectrum and a move closer towards the better end would be to say, I think seafood that's caught processed locally is always going to be a safer bet. not because we're superior in our ethics, but because the longer that supply chain gets,

the murkier it gets and the less accountability there is in it. So it might be more expensive, but it's probably to be less likely to have all these crimes in it. Ian Urbina, thank you very much, man. I really appreciate your time, and you have definitely done the firsthand research, so I appreciate that. I think a lot of us do,

and I'm sure you've got some smells that you still can't get rid of from as a result of that research. In my very core. Yeah, thank you so much. I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, here's what you can check out next on the Jordan Harbinger show. You're in Somalia trying to track down pirate gangs, and I love to kind of hear what this felt like.

We went with the big security team, and we paid the security team in a lot of money, and it was this one portion of a clan in Central Somalia that was supposed to protect us. So how did they get you? My partner, Ashwin, flew off to Mogadishu. I drove him to the airport, and then we saw him off.

He got on the plane safely. And then on the way back from the airport, back into town towards our hotel, there was actually a truck waiting for us. It was a truck with a cannon welded in the back. These are very common trucks. They're called technicals. At first we thought it was there

to watch over us or protect us or something. But actually it stopped our car and 12 gunmen from the flatbed came over to my side of the car. And they actually fired in the air and then opened the door and tore me out of the car. They were waiting for me. and they were probably waiting or hoping for both of us.

I think they were a little bit disappointed that there was only one journalist. They beat me. They broke my glasses, and I was wearing glasses at the time, and they had another car waiting, and they bundled me into it, and off we drove into the bush. For about three hours, something like that.

Hard to keep track of time, but at some point we stopped. They blindfolded me, and they took me a few steps over to a mattress. So there was a mattress waiting for me in the middle of nowhere. There were other people there, other guards and other hostess.

And I sat down and for the next two years and eight months, I was a hostage. For more on life and captivity under the thumb of Somali pirates and how he made it out, check out episode 115 with Michael Scott Moore here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Before I forget, the ship flagging shipping episode, other crime on the high seas episode was episode 739. The greenwashing episode that I mentioned earlier in the show was episode 599. Man, so much we didn't even get to. I've heard about shark finning. I know that Ian has done work on this.

Really gross. The amount of sharks that die as a result. The effect on the ecosystem. Something like 90 million dead sharks per year. Because this superstitious bullshit, really disappointing. Come on, humanity. Get it together.

And the sailors that die out there, or slaves that die out there, antiquated laws limit damages for dead sailors. Because when the laws were drafted hundreds of years ago, in some cases, death at sea, it was seen as an act of God, so it was unavoidable. The shipping company couldn't possibly be held liable. It's an act of God.

It's not because they have no safety equipment. They're being worked to the bone. They have no proper food, medical care, et cetera. It couldn't be that. It's got to be an act of God. So nowadays, obviously, we have tons of safety equipment and procedures. So if companies don't follow them, they should definitely be held liable. But lo and behold, governments are not really keen on catching up

because having no laws and having no jurisdiction is kind of a convenient way to wash or hands of the whole thing. A lot of ship scams, a lot of fraud. We talked about that in episode 739, which I mentioned. That's Matthew Campbell. Insurance fraud. A lot of sea-based fraud. Fake scuttling where you destroy your own ship. Fuel scams. Stealing ships. I'm going to be doing a show in a few months here with a guy who steals ships for a living. That's going to be pretty damn interesting. I promise you that. Unfortunately here, a lot of the slavery stuff, I just don't see a positive outcome happening with this. A lot of times the slavery. are rescued by police and then sold to another captain because they can and they can make money

and they're rescued by police in a country that also doesn't value human life and they're not from that country. It's just a huge shame. Some of the slaves that Ian talked about in the book had crazy medical ailments, stuff you haven't seen mostly in modern history or stuff you can only get when there's 30 people in a space for six guys eating gruel every day and don't get proper medical care with tons of pests on the ship. I mean, just really, really disgusting stuff that I won't go into here. A lot of you eat when you listen to the show, we just don't need that level of detail. Just imagine what it's like on a boat with sick people, no hygiene, not enough water. Just close your eyes and imagine the smell. But at the end of the day, we're all a little

complicit, right? Because a lot of what these shady companies do is help international customers like you and me put food on our plate, slave labor, unfair contracts on the open seas result in us getting our cheap-ass tuna and sushi. And it's all plausible deniability for those further up the supply chain. So keep that in mind. Look, I love sushi. I love fish, but it is hard to eat that stuff without thinking and wondering what poor SOB had to catch it. And I like to think I'm paying for stuff, but you just never know. All things Ian Urbina will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com or just ask our AI chatbot transcripts in the show notes, advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support

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